Kashmir: Clashes, curfew continue

Fresh clashes between irate crowds and security forces erupted at two dozen places across curfew-bound Kashmir on Friday, leaving scores injured, two of them critically.

Yet the intensity of protests and clashes was comparatively low given the widespread blood-spattered disturbances witnessed on all Fridays over the past month.

A delegation of Jammu and Kashmir’s mainstream Opposition parties will meet President Pranab Mukherjee at the Rashtrapati Bhavan at 1.30 pm on Saturday to apprise him of the prevailing situation in the Valley. The 20-member delegation will be led by former chief minister and National Conference working president Omar Abdullah, and will include leaders from the Congress, CPI(M) and regional parties.

The J&K police and CRPF, witnesses said, fired teargas canisters to quell pro-azadi protests in the districts of Srinagar, Baramulla, Bandipore, Shopian, Anantnag, Kulgam and Pulwama districts. Two youth were critically injured in pellet gun firings in Khanabal of Anantnag and Kakapora in neighbouring Pulwama, reports said.

Earlier at dawn on Friday, the curfew was extended to more areas in the Valley “as a precautionary measure” in view of the call for a march to Aripathan area in the central district of Budgam, given by an alliance of key separatist leaders.

On August 16, four civilians were killed and over a dozen, including two women, wounded in CRPF’s firing in the village. All roads leading into Aripathan were seal-ed by security forces after laying Concertina razor wire and their “bunker” vehicles criss-crossing these, witnesses said.

A police statement said 21 incidents of stone pelting were reported after Friday prayers from Sopore, Shopian, Kulgam, Baramulla, Handwara, Bandipora and Pulwama. While Srinagar and the towns of Baramulla, Kaloosa Bandipore, Anantnag, Shopian and Pampore continued to reel under curfew, restrictions under Section 144 CrPC were enforced in the rest of the Valley, the police said.

On Thursday evening, unknown assailants hurled a grenade towards the house of former National Conference MLA Sheikh Muhammad Rafi in Kachdoora village of Shopian, but it fell in the premises and exploded without causing any damage, the police said.

Meanwhile, the government employees have expressed dismay at the diktat issued by Kashmir’s divisional commissioner, Baseer Khan, that those among them who stay away from duty will not be paid salaries. The employees’ trade union leaders have pleaded that in present circumstances when official curfews and separatists-called shutdowns have brought life to standstill across the Valley and protests and violent clashes on the streets have become a daily sight it is physically not possible for them to report to their duties.

“It is also dangerous to walk towards our places of work. Jaan hai to Jahan Hai (If there’s life, then there’s the world)”, said J&K Civil Secretariat Non-Gazetted Employees Union president, Ghulam Rasool Mir. He pointed out that there is no public transport available and also the security forces just do not honour curfew passes issued by the district magistrates, not to speak of their ID proofs being treated as such. “When ministers can’t leave their homes, how can poor employees reach their respective places of work ” he asked. He also said that if the government stops their salaries as has been threatened by Mr. Khan the employees’ bodies will take legal course against such “arbitrary action.”

Meanwhile, Jammu Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CCI) has called for Jammu bandh on Saturday to “support peace and communal harmony and stand up against evil designs of the anti-nationals”. In a statement, the president of CCI, Rakesh Gupta, said: “It is the time we need to stand up against the evil designs of the anti-nationals and support the nationalist forces so that normalcy could be restored in the State of Jammu and Kashmir at the earliest.”

However, expressing grave concern over “certain unsettling formulations” of the CCI and the idea of Jammu Bandh at this point in time, Jammu for India, a local pressure group by former BJP spokesman Prof. Hari Om Mahajan, urged the people of the Jammu to “appreciate the dangerous ramifications of these formulations and eschew the idea of bandh in the larger national interest as well in the interest of nationalist people who have been doing all to defeat the ongoing communal and separatist movement in the Valley”.

Mr. Mahajan said, “What has shocked the nationalists in the state was the formulation that there should be ‘intra-regional dialogue’ to end turmoil in Kashmir and also the formulation which suggested that CCI has also overtly and covertly given credence to the sinister demand in Kashmir seeking Right to Self determination.” He asked, “How could a trading body indulge in activities which have the potential of unsettling the settled and directly promoting the separatist cause in the name of Jammu’s interest ”